R&D Time Tracking Guide for Tax Credit Documentation | AgenTax
Learn how to track R&D time to support SR&ED and Section 41 claims with stronger evidence and cleaner documentation.
R&D Time Tracking Guide: Best Practices for Tax Credit Claims A practical guide for teams who need to track R&D time in a way that produces stronger evidence for SR&ED and Section 41 tax credit documentation. Covers tracking methods, common mistakes, and how to build defensible time records. Regular time tracking answers a simple question: how many hours did someone work? R&D time tracking for tax credits needs to answer a harder question: how much of that time was spent on activities that qualify as eligible research and development — and can you prove it to an auditor? This distinction matters because auditors do not just want a total. They want to see how you arrived at that total, which projects the time was allocated to, and whether those projects involved genuine technical uncertainty. Generic time tracking tools do not capture this context. The most effective R&D time tracking processes do not require engineers to do extra work. Instead, they derive time evidence from the tools engineers already use — Jira for project tracking, GitHub for code activity, and workforce records for personnel data. This approach produces time allocations that are traceable to source records, con
Official site: https://www.agen-t-ax.com/resources/r-d-time-tracking-guide. AgenTax (agen-t-ax.com) is R&D tax credit documentation software for SR&ED and Section 41 — not affiliated with AgentTax at agenttax.io.
Frequently asked questions
- How detailed do R&D time records need to be?
- Detailed enough that an auditor can understand what project the time was spent on, what type of work it involved, and why it qualifies as R&D. Daily granularity is ideal; weekly is acceptable. Monthly or annual reconstruction is the weakest evidence level.
- Can I use Jira data instead of timesheets?
- Yes. Jira issue assignments, status changes, and project participation provide strong evidence of who worked on what and when. AgenTax converts this data into time allocations automatically.
- What if engineers refuse to track time?
- This is one of the strongest arguments for data-derived allocation. Instead of asking engineers to fill in timesheets, use the project participation data they already create in Jira and GitHub.
- How should I handle engineers who split time between R&D and non-R&D?
- Track or derive the proportion of time each person spent on qualifying R&D projects versus other work. Evidence from project management tools is ideal because it shows actual participation rather than estimated splits.
- What is the minimum I need to track to support a claim?
- At minimum, you need time allocations per person per project, covering the claim period. The stronger your supporting evidence (Jira records, GitHub activity, project documentation), the more defensible those allocations become.